Sartain's Original Engraved Steel Plate Of Charlotte Brontë Portrait Comes To Market

by Stephen J. Gertz

The plate.
(Image surrounding engraved oval is a reflection off the plate while photographed).

The original steel plate of the mezzotint portrait of Charlotte Brontë engraved by John Sartain has surfaced.

Sartain (1808-1897), known as the "father of mezzotint engraving" in the U.S., produced the portrait, engraved after George Richmond's famous portrait in chalk, in Philadelphia c. 1857.

The 10 1/4 x 7 inch beveled steel plate, engraved with Sartain's signature (verso with dagger-and-S mark of John Sellers & Sons Sheffield, an English manufacturer of steel and copper plates for engravers, amongst other goods, with an office in New York), appears to have been made to accompany the long review essay, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, in the October 1857 issue of The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, which Sartain had an early financial interest in. 

A print struck from the plate.

John Sartain was arguably the foremost American engraver of his time and inarguably the pioneer of the mezzotint process in this country. He popularized the intricate printmaking process when he emigrated to the United States from England in 1830. His mezzotint prints possess a strong and rich texture that heightens and intensifies their aesthetic character.

Sartain was born in London in 1808. Left fatherless at the age of eight, he became responsible for the support of his family.  At age eleven, he took a job as assistant scene painter to an Italian pyrotechnist working at Covent Garden under Charles Kemble’s management and at Vauxhall Gardens in London. 

John Sartain.

In 1823, Sartain became an apprentice to engraver John Swaine (1775-1860), with whom he studied and worked for seven years.  Sartain also learned to paint, studying miniature painting with Henry Richter (1772-1857). He moved to Philadelphia in 1830.

He then produced engravings for various American periodicals including Gentleman’s Magazine, The Casket, and Godey’s Lady’s Magazine.  Sartain, beginning 1841, made quite a few  engravings for Graham’s Magazine, and, in 1849, he, along with William Sloanaker, bought the magazine for $5,000.  They changed the title to Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art. Among Graham's noted contributors were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe (an assistant editor there, as well), who became a close, personal friend of Sartain.

Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850.

George Richmond (1809-1896), in his youth a disciple of William Blake, was a painter and draftsman with 326 portraits to his credit.

Brontë's publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co., commissioned this portrait in chalk of the novelist from Richmond as a gift for Brontë's father, who saw in it "strong indications of the genius of the author." Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell recalled seeing the portrait hung in the parlour of the Haworth parsonage, and a copy of it appeared in her biography of Brontë.

Only a handful of likenesses of Charlotte Bronte have survived,  Richmond's portrait is by far the most celebrated, and Sartain's mezzotint is the finest engraving based upon it.

The plate exhibits the mezzotint (half-tone) process very well. Mezzotint achieves tone variations by working the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth called a "rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean.  Subtle gradations of light and shade and richness in the print can be accomplished in skilled hands, and Sartain was a master of mezzotint, the first tonal process used in engraving, with aquatint to follow. Previously, tone and shading were possible only by employing hatching, cross-hatching, or stipple engraving, line or dot-based techniques that left a lot to be desired for nuanced effects.

There is no truth to the rumor I started that the Van Morrison-penned song, Mystic Eyes (recorded by Them, 1965), was inspired by the Richmond-Sartain portrait of Charlotte Brontë.

The plate is being offered by The 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, of Maryland and New York.

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[BRONTE, Charlotte]. SARTAIN, John. Charlotte Bronte mezzotint portrait. Original steel plate, signed in the plate by John Sartain after George Richmond. N.P., [Philadelphia], c. 1857.

Original beveled steel plate (7 x 10 ¼ in.),  Light surface wear, a small tarnish mark.

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Brontë plate and print images courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, with our thanks.

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The Bars of Paris, A Bar-Room in the U.S.

LEGRAND, Louis. Les Bars.
Paris: Gustave Pellet, 1908.

Louis Auguste Mathieu Legrand (1863–1951) was a French artist who worked in etchings, graphic art and paintings. Many of Legrand’s subjects were taken from Parisian nightlife, the bars, brothels, and music halls, and featured an undercurrent of eroticism. His black and white etchings provide a particular sense of decadence.

English Bar
(Arwas 389)

En passant
(Arwas 391)

Legrand  studied etching and engraving techniques with Felicien Rops, one of the few pupils of the great Belgian Symbolist, and he learned much from him but his manner of viewing men and women and life was different; Legrand had irony, wit and humor, and empathy for  the common and the socially scorned.

Aux Folies
(Arwas 386)

La Negresse
(Arwas 390)

Rops said that Legrand had “un amour extraordinaire du modele” (an extraordinary love for the sculptured) and in another remark said, “What a man, that Legrand, he would find angles in a billiard ball.”

Sportmen
(Arwas 385)

Pochard (Drunk)
(Arwas 387)

"An admirably skillful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the artists of to-day. Louis Legrand also shows to what extent Manet and Degas have revolutionized the art of illustration, in freeing the painters from obsolete laws and guiding them  toward  truth  and  frank  psychological  study. Legrand is full of them without resembling them.

Prince K
(Arwas 388)

Fin de soirée.
(Arwas 384).

"We must not forget that besides the technical innovation [division of tones, study of complementary colours] impression-ism has brought us novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the choice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and inaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes with the most seductive qualities" (Camille Mauclair).

Au Bar
(Arwas 352)

Legrand certainly had an eye for the louche life, the languid couple below we imagine nearing the end of a long night of liquid pleasure in their corner of the bar.

Unidentified
From a folio suite of Legrand works accompanying Les Bars.

Unidentified
From a folio suite of Legrand works accompanying Les Bars.

But all things must pass, all parties must end:

Les Victimes de L'Alcool. Pathé, 1911

Blame it on those pesky, non-tippling temperance nuts in the United States who really knew how to poop a party. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and What I Saw There by T.S. Arthur, about the effect of ardent spirits on a man, his family, and the entire community, is now an old warhorse but was one of the most popular American novels of the 19th century. Adapted to the stage, it became an instant sensation.

ARTHUR, T[imothy].S[hay]. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and What I Saw There.
Philadelphia: J.W. Bradley, 1854.
First edition.

Ten Nights in a Bar-Room.Publisher's original binding.
First edition, 1854.

Mezzotint by John Sartain
From Ten Nights in a Bar-Room
First edition, 1854.

From its debut shortly after the novel was published through the rest of the 19th century it was one of the most oft-produced plays in the United States, in continuous production by someone, somewhere. into the 20th century. With the birth of the cinema it was, of course, filmed. Twice.

Ten Nights in a Bar Room
Thanhouser, 1910.

Ten Nights in a Bar Room, 1931.

 But, really, didn't they know that alcoholic beverages are medicine? I drink Health Beer. It keeps my water running, allows the spirit to take flight, is an excellent digestive ferment, and puts hair on your chest. And you?

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"
(Benjamin Franklin)

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Images from first edition of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room courtesy of Dragon Books.

Images of Les Bars from a deluxe proof set and are courtesy of Sims Reed Rare Books, part of a folio suite of over 40 original etchings by the artist which include the two unidentified (by me) works above and Au Bar.

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